One day to go!

Well the start of the 2012 ARC is only 29 hours away! Yesterday was therefore the last big big push to complete boat preparations (though the to-do list is still quite long) so the crew divided in the morning. Rich and Dianne headed into the central market and had a hilarious guided tour of the 'freshest stock' store rooms to select fruit and veg at different stages of ripeness. Once back at the boat they painstakingly washed everything in a solution of Milton liquid and stowed them in a hanging net in the forecabin.

We resisted the temptation to buy a full hand of bananas like this boat - hope they have lots of recipes for bananas as they will all ripen at the same time!

Meanwhile Fergus and Graham removed our leaking forehatch and carefully removed every trace of the old sealant before re-fixing it with new Sikaflex so we hope that it's now fixed.

A hundred and one little jobs have been completed, including the important one of collecting a huge bag of our newly-laundered washing. Today we have a Skipper's briefing which will include the latest weather forecast for the next few days so this afternoon we'll decide on our planned route - the direct line between here and Saint Lucia ins't necessarily the quickest as the favourable trade winds tend to blow more strongly a bit further south. The traditional advice was to 'sail south until the butter melts, then turn right'!

Best wishes from all of the Maunie crew - we hope we'll have time to post a final blog tomorrow morning (the start is at 1.00pm).